Strong Minds, Soft Hearts
by Jadzia Bear
Summary: A collection of meet-cute drabbles featuring Jemma Simmons and Spencer Reid.
1. Mathematics

Spencer breathes in the smell of freshly ground coffee as he waits patiently in line. This hole-in-the-wall coffee place looks like another other on the block, but they've earned his recurring patronage through their ability to consistently avoid burning the coffee beans. Also, they're one of those places where the staff make a concerted effort to memorise the names and orders of the regular customers, which he finds inexplicably appealing.

"Hey, Spencer," smiles the girl behind the counter when he gets to the front of the line.

"Hey, Darcy," he smiles back. She's not wearing her name badge today, but with an eidetic memory it's not like he ever needs anyone to wear a name badge more than once. "The usual, please."

"Grande latte and a blueberry scone. You're in luck," she says as she retrieves the scone from the display cabinet with a pair of tongs. "It's the last one."

There's a soft sound of disappointment from the person in line behind him. Spencer turns to see a pretty girl in a navy sweater with a rose design near the shoulder.

"Did you want it?" he asks.

Her fingers go to her lips like she wished she could retract the sound that just escaped her, and she starts to shake her head.

"Yeah, sorry, Jemma," Darcy says, leaning to the side so she can see past Spencer. "A dude came in before and bought like a dozen of them, so we ran out early today."

"It's fine," Jemma tells Spencer. "It's all yours." She's smiling politely, but that little nose scrunch tells him she's just being polite.

"To have here, or to go?" Darcy asks as she rings up his order.

Spencer gets out his wallet. "Can I actually get that scone cut in half? One half and the coffee will be to have here, and the other..." He turns back to the girl. "Here or to go?"

"Well," a flattered smile tugs at her lips as a light blush creeps into her cheeks, "I was planning to have it here, but you really don't have to do that."

Spencer passes Darcy his card and does his best to emulate even a hint of Morgan's charm. "You said it's my scone. I can do what I like with it," he says over his shoulder, his mouth quirking.

Darcy smirks as she runs his card through the machine and hands it back to him. "Smooth," she commends him. She slides a table number across the counter to him and he takes a seat at a small table nearby.

Jemma automatically shuffles into the spot he just vacated, blushing a little harder now.

"I'll just go ahead and put your vanilla latte on the same table number," Darcy tells Jemma pointedly as she takes the pile of coins from Jemma's hand. "Now go and talk to the nice boy while I take a really long time to make your coffee," she says, throwing Spencer a conspiratorial wink.

Jemma approaches his table. She still looks a bit unsure about the whole situation, despite the small intrigued smile gracing her lips. She starts to pull out the other chair.

"_You_ really don't have to do _that_," he says. There's no question he wants her to—she's pretty and seems sweet, and he appreciates what Darcy's trying to do, but the last thing he wants is for Jemma to feel at all pressured.

"Perhaps just until our orders are ready?" she suggests, slipping into the seat.

"Sure," he agrees pleasantly, and then considers having a heart attack because _he's sitting in a cafe with a pretty girl._ Things like this don't happen to him.

"So, Spencer, was it? What do you do?" she asks.

Morgan has told him repeated to just say he's an FBI agent and leave it at that, but Spencer can never stop himself from providing a little more detail. This has historically proven to be a terrible idea, but Jemma seems intrigued, not repulsed, by the nature of his work, and it's not long before they're deep into a conversation about entomology and the hatching rates of various forms of larvae in decomposing tissue.

Darcy doesn't actually take that long with their orders, and Jemma stays even after her coffee and half a scone are brought over. They chat until they reach the bottom of their lattes, and somehow it's not even that awkward, except perhaps right at the end when Darcy spots them exchanging email addresses and starts doing some kind of victory dance behind the counter.


	2. Taxonomy

The zoo isn't somewhere Morgan would usually choose to spend his day off, but that's what happens when Garcia gets the flu and begs-slash-commands him to go in her place as Reid's plus one. The kid's had two tickets booked for some kind of giant tortoise meet-and-greet for weeks, meaning the whole BAU now knows more about tortoises than they ever wanted to, so what the hell, he may as well go and see the thing in the flesh.

As soon as they get to the zoo they head to the reptile section and have their photo taken with the super old tortoise—who, okay, is way cooler than Morgan had expected—while Reid grills the poor zookeeper on the creature's life history and Morgan feeds it sliced vegetables and tries not to get his fingers inadvertently bitten off.

They're wandering around the rest of the zoo now while they wait for the photos to be printed, and as they approach the dingo enclosure Morgan notices a young woman subtly checking him out. She's a slim brunette, with big eyes and delicate features that remind him of a Disney princess. She's cute but not really his type, and perhaps he's not quite what she's looking for either, going by the way her gaze is now lingering decidedly on an oblivious Reid.

Morgan leans his forearms on the railing next to Reid and keeps his focus front and centre while he lets Princess Eyes have her fill. He watches the animals darting around the enclosure and considers his options as wingman .

Three cream-yellow dingoes are tossing around what look like kibble-filled dog toys, bushy tails waving in the air as they work to get at the treats.

"'Australia's answer to the wolf'," Morgan reads off the faded sign. "Isn't everything from Australia meant to be ten times scarier? They look more like puppy dogs."

Reid squints at the sign. "It says their scientific name is _Canis familiaris dingo_, which implies that they are in fact more closely related to the domestic dog, _Canis familiaris_, than to the grey wolf, _Canis lupus_."

"Actually," comes the polite interjection from behind them.

G_o, girl,_ Morgan thinks, suppressing a smile. It seems Princess is capable of finding her own conversation starters.

"That sign is out of date. The dingo has since been reclassified as _Canis lupus dingo_, and the dog as _Canis lupus familiaris_, meaning these guys," she nods at the dingos, "the grey wolf and the humble Chihuahua all have far more in common than we first thought."

"Huh," says Reid. "The things you can learn from DNA hybridization."

"Indeed," she agrees. It turns out she has a very pretty smile, which is not at all lost on Reid, going by the way he's smiling back.

"You work here?" Morgan asks.

She laughs lightly and waves the idea away with her hand. "Oh no, I'm just a biochemist with a penchant for taxonomic nomenclature."

For reasons unfathomable to Morgan, Reid looks delighted to hear this.

If the girl speaks geek, the best thing Morgan can do as wingman is get his devastatingly handsome mug out of the way and let Spencer be Spencer. "I'm going to grab us a couple of cokes," he says, throwing Reid a quick wink before making his way over to a nearby drinks cart.

Turns out the guy staffing the cart is a Seahawks fan, so Morgan cracks open one of the cans and has a good long chat to him about their last few games while he keeps one eye on the flirting nerds. She's awkward in a similar way to Reid, like she's given up on the idea of ever growing out of her self-consciousness, and she barely even comes up to his chin, but they look good together and the conversation seems to be flowing. The profiler in him is picking up all the right signs: the open body language, the eye contact, the shy smiles.

Morgan waits until Reid catches his eye before he heads back over and passes him the unopened can of coke.

"Jemma knows the head veterinarian here and she's offered to take us on a tour of the vet facilities," Reid says, looking even more excited about this than he was about the tortoise. "What do you say?"

"You guys go, I really want to check out the, uh, elephants," Morgan says, hoping there were in fact elephants at this zoo.

"Are you sure?" Reid asks, though his feet are already carrying him away from Morgan as he says the words.

"I'm sure," he says, probably not trying quite hard enough to hide his smirk. "You kids have fun."

Reid mouths 'thank you' over Jemma's head and Morgan lifts his drink in acknowledgement. It's only as they're walking away that he notices Jemma's shoulder bag has a Doctor Who design on it.

Morgan pulls his phone out of his pocket. Hearing about these adorable dorks is going to make Garcia's day.


	3. Academia

When Jemma steps onto the crowded afternoon train, the only seat left is next to a tall, gangly-limbed guy with fantastic hair. He's slouched down in his seat, long legs crossed over each other and a messenger bag across his lap. On top of the bag are various papers—print-outs of scientific journal articles, by the look. He's examining one of them studiously, a thumbnail held thoughtlessly between his teeth as he reads.

He looks up briefly when she sits down, gives her a polite smile, and returns to his reading. She smiles in return, though she's not sure he's looking at her long enough to catch it. She genuinely doesn't mean to read over his shoulder, but before she can stop herself she's read the title of the paper he's holding. It's all she can do to hold in a gasp, because it's one of her own, written and published back when she was at Sci Ops.

She parts her lips to say something, but then closes them again. She looks away, not wanting him to feel her eyes on him, but then can't help glancing back again, just to check that she read the paper correctly. She hems and haws over whether to say anything, and apparently doesn't manage to do it as inconspicuously as she'd hoped because he eventually catches her staring at him and says, "Can I help you with something?"

"It's just... I wrote that paper," she says, pointing at it.

He blinks. "_You're_ Dr. Simmons?"

She nods. "Dr. Jemma Simmons. Call me Jemma," she says with a smile that's probably a bit too toothy.

He scrambles to sit up properly in his seat. "I love your work!" he blurts out. He holds out a hand for her to shake. "Dr. Spencer Reid."

She slips her hand into his long-fingered one. "Not Dr. Reid of the FBI's BAU, by any chance?"

"Yeah," he says brightly, clearly surprised she's heard of him.

"I adore _your_ work!" she says, shaking his hand vigorously. "I've been reading quite a few of your papers of late. I didn't realise you were so young!"

"Same here," says Reid.

They've stopped shaking hands but they haven't let go, and it's a long few seconds before Jemma realises they're sitting there basically just holding hands and smiling at each other like idiots.

Reid is the first to break the spell. "So, um," he releases her hand and clears his throat, "while I have you, can I ask you a few questions?"

Jemma grins. "Only if I can do the same."

* * *

**AN:** Thanks so much for reading such an obscure pairing! If you were contemplating leaving a review, I can pretty much guarantee it would make my day :)


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